Why Vote?

What's saddens me the most about our political "system", and I understand that at it's root it's just a crappy way of getting things done without bashing each other's heads in, but this dogged red vs blue vs orange, sports team mentality all the time is just stupid. We're all here in this place together. Y'know it's fine when it's time to set your day to day life aside and "vote". It's a special time where we break off into groups in a deliberate way and try to represent what matters the most to us individually. But after? When it's all done? We're a community again, aren't we?

Why would you push a "win at all costs" agenda? Once the election is over we all come together again, as a people. Don't we? Is our political system supposed to make us feel like what we're supposed to do is sit around taking it in the ear until one day it's our turn to be in charge and then we get to screw the other team, just as hard, right back? I don't think so.

We shouldn't be pushing Party above all. It's wrong and goes against the nature of how we want to take care of each other. Do we want to live in a continual merry-go-round of us against them? Saying it another way, our system is supposed to be about avoiding conflict, not embracing it.

Voting is supposed to be the root of our freedom. Our most basic and cherished right. It's what makes us free. It ensures we all get a voice and get to participate and make our common world a place where everyone can be free and live without fear. That is unless you exercise your freedom and choose not to vote. If you don't vote you are threatened with repercussions and reprisal and that you should have your freedoms stripped from you.  Commonly I hear it phrased: "If you don't vote, then you can't complain"

Wow. 

To me this translates into: "You'll be denied your freedom until you do what you're told".  Explain to me how it's not. It makes me even more sure than ever that I am calling voting exactly what it is: a sham and a dammed lie.  I'm not even talking about the fantasy of ultimate freedom where you can do absolutely anything you want. I'm only talking about the limited "My freedom ends where your freedom begins" kind.

What is voting other than pointing at someone and saying "You! I authorize you to act as my agent in all things. You are my leader."

I really don't see the advantage of "follow the leader" in community building. It doesn't make any sense. Community doesn't grow fast enough to require a leader. Our population might grow fast enough, but not our culture. Sorry.  In cases of immediate action, leadership is critical. But as a way to caretake the long term health and happiness of a few billion of us? No way.

Why all the belly-aching for a leader anyway? The whole concept of a leader, other than war or sports, doesn't apply.  Outside of those unique and limited scenarios, leaders have no bearing at all on anyones life. Who's you're leader? You're boss? Is that really who leads you through your life? Directs your goals and morals? Or maybe it's Politicians? Judges? Doctors? These people aren't leaders. It's a job and at best it's a role. They lead nothing and nobody. Virtually all of us, everywhere on earth throughout all of time have had little or nothing at all to do with these people. We have no meaningful relationship with them. The only person who is your leader is you. 

I really don't think that apathy and disempowerment is what is keeping people from voting. Just like I don't believe that fascism and hate are encouraging people to get in my face about how wrong not to vote.  I believe that fear is the real motivator in the latter case. I truly believe that people are afraid that if I defy the system, even intellectually, they might have to "do something about it". That my unwillingness to participate will force them to have to act; to actually have to correct me in some way. Perhaps by denying me friendship, work, respect or all my teeth and an unbruised liver. You know, whatever. It just something to hurt me in some way so I start to toe the line. Because there has to be consequences right? "You made a choice and these are the consequences pal!".  I guess that'll teach me. 

But then, what if you (or someone) didn't act to correct me?  Didn't do something about it? Then my act of defiance would go unpunished. Because there is nothing in the world that would take issue with me not voting. Nothing except an emotionally motivated human being. Or perhaps many of them. For without the enraged human, the sticks and stones will just lie there and my bones would remain whole and perfect. 

And why do I not believe that it is apathy keeping people from voting? Because they are people. People simply have interests other than this funny game people refer to as the political system. The effect that voting has on their regular lives is virtually insignificant. Probably the biggest impact it has is the breakup of their daily routine on voting day and then that's it. A slightly different day in the sea of days that make up their lives. 

We know that politicians are people just like us. And we know in our hearts that we don't really respect laws. Laws are supposed to be immutable and inviolate. And really, laws that don't apply to everyone are rules. And rules are just morality plays. And we violate the law all the time. We really do. Usually in small ways that we judge are of no consequence. Perhaps by not claiming something on your taxes, jay-walking, giving preferential treatment to your friends and family, nipping the occasional whatever from work now and then, intimidating someone into doing what you want, forging paperwork to get the day off, lying, misrepresenting facts…things we all do.  Well, so do our leaders. And we know it. And because we know it, we can't take them seriously. Until something exceptional happens. 

Something out of the ordinary happens and we all go running back to the law book that we clearly don't believe in, but we run to it nonetheless and hold it high like a holy talisman. Then sit above in judgment. It really stinks of hypocrisy to me. Why not have faith in your own judgement? Your own mind? Most people aren't smarter than you. At best they just have different experiences.

"You have to vote so the bad people don't get into office!" 

First, the system is broken if 'bad' people can get into office.  They shouldn't be getting through the door of the lobby let alone running the damn show if they are 'bad'. We can definitely do better than that when we are talking about running our country. If our best and our brightest include "bad people", well, we have a society that positively values "bad people". As the late, great George Carlin put it so eloquently: 

"Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody: 'The Public Sucks. F*ck Hope.'"

Next, the system is broken if you are forced to vote 'against' the people trying to rule you, as opposed to voting for the people you want to rule you.  I hate using the whole 'rule you' rhetoric. It's lame. I'm sorry. The system is broken when we all know that they don't rule anything. Their impact on our lives is marginal at best. It simply does not matter in the least who occupies "the most important position in our nation". 

At my most pessimistic I'm convinced that the real reason for the unending stream of unmitigated douchebaggery from the ruling class is because no matter how morally contemptible they act, in our day to day, Sally and Joe Lunchbox lives, it barely makes a whit of difference. Unless you're unlucky enough to be minoritized by whatever junta happens to be in power, the worst you'll suffer is being indignant. That'll sound great when they talk about all this in the future won't it? If they even care. "Well, we do know that many people of the time became indignant…"

Oh, but "politics is so much more complicated than that!" And, "There are so many details that makes such a simple description useless". Okay. Fair enough. But if so how do you, how does anybody know enough to ever be able to know enough?

So, in the end, the deal with voting is that I have to give up my "power to effect change in my community" and give it to somebody else. Somebody who gets that power, and not just mine but everyone else's as well. And they get to effect changes in my community. And I only get one shot at this. One vote and then I have to shut up and say that whatever happens after I vote is the best of all possible worlds.  Even if the result is anathema to me, no matter how much I hate and loathe it, what I'm supposed to do is just grin and carry on until they let me scratch another line on a piece of paper to try and hope that this time everything will be right with the world.